With the New York Jets on their bye this week, what better time than now to reflect on the incredible season that Jets All-Pro cornerback Darrelle Revis is having here in 2011?
The 26-year-old Revis is undoubtedly the NFL’s best cover corner, and has emerged as a top candidate for Defensive Player of the Year honors again this season, an award he narrowly missed out on in 2009.
That 2009 season was a season for the ages, in which Revis blossomed under then-rookie head coach Rex Ryan, as the 24-year-old shut down every elite receiver he faced over the course of the 19 games he played.
Roddy White, Steve Smith, Randy Moss (twice), Chad Ochocinco (twice), Andre Johnson, Marques Colston, Terrell Owens (twice), and Reggie Wayne were among the castaways lost on Revis Island that year.
But then in 2010, an injury caused Revis to have a down year, for his standards at least, and he only appeared in 13 games and did not play up to the elite standard he had set the year before.
As the season went on, the elite play of Revis re-emerged, and it culminated with an outstanding performance in the Jets’ playoff win against the Indianapolis Colts, as he held Reggie Wayne to just one catch for one yard.
In 2011, Revis is back at his best, and after having zero interceptions in the entire 2010 season, Revis already has four picks, for a career-high 184 return yards, including a career-high 100-yard return for a score.
But interceptions don’t tell the whole story. The good folks at Pro Football Focus have done a phenomenal job breaking down Revis’s 2011 season to date, and it’s clear I’m not the only one making “Primetime” comparisons.
In one of PFF’s “Stories of the Season,” Sam Monson breaks down the first seven weeks of Revis’s year, looking at the eye-popping figures about Revis’s play that are making people talk about Deion Sanders-caliber domination.
To this point, Revis has been thrown at 33 times. He has allowed 10 receptions. He has yet to give up a touchdown, though he has scored one of his own.
Opposing quarterbacks are just as likely to have the ball picked (four times) or batted down (another six times) as they are to have it caught by their intended receiver when they challenge Revis’ coverage.
Picking on Revis this season is yielding a QB rating of just 2.9. Yes, 2.9. The next best mark among starting corners is the 39.4 of the Panthers’ Chris Gamble and there are only three players under 50.
Monson goes on to break down literally every single one of the ten catches that Revis has allowed in coverage this season, including the impressive five balls that Brandon Marshall caught a few weeks ago. It’s well worth a read.
Eight of the 10 completions he has allowed came in two games, with Brandon Marshall responsible for half of them. In three games this season Revis hasn’t given up a catch at all and in two more he has allowed just one.
Revis’ best five games account for just two catches for 19 yards from 13 targets.
Just incredible. In this era of the NFL, with the emphasis on illegal contact and defensive holding called tighter than any era in the history of football, it’s astounding that a cornerback can be this good.
None of Revis’s 10 catches allowed (on 33 targets) has gone longer than 26 yards, which was all the way back in the Jets’ Week 1 game in which Revis had the last laugh with a fourth-quarter interception.
Monson praises Revis’s play, and emphasizes to his readers that we are witnessing something special. If you’re not watching, you may want to take notice.
He is raising the bar for the position and giving renewed spirit to the phrase ‘shutdown corner’, something only recently thought to be extinct as a species
… If Revis maintains this kind of performance over the rest of the season, we may be witnessing something that sails right past special and lodges itself firmly in all-time greatness.
One thing is for certain. There is no active player in this league that can compare to the greatness that Darrelle Revis puts on display on a weekly basis.
It’s time that Revis gets compared to the likes of Deion Sanders and Willie Brown, not Nnamdi Asomugha and Charles Woodson, two players he’s arguably already eclipsed at a younger age.
We already know that Jets coach Rex Ryan thinks that Revis will go down as the best New York Jet of all time. (Although teammate Nick Mangold is right up there in that race, in my opinion.)
His NFL peers recently rated him as the eighth best player in the game at any position. ESPN’s Scouts Inc. rated him the third best player overall this past August.
The scariest thing for opposing wide receivers is that Revis is just 26 years old. He’s got a ton of football left in him. Barring injury, he will be a first-ballot Hall of Famer, and will go down as this generation’s best cornerback.
The Jets are very lucky to have him. Credit goes to general manager Mike Tannenbaum for trading up to draft him back in 2007, and for negotiating the grueling contract extension before the 2010 season to keep him here.
Jets fans hope that Revis is a Jet for life, and I imagine his teammates and coaches feel the same. We are witnessing greatness on a weekly basis. Don’t blink.
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